A reader in Wisconsin is outraged. I can’t blame her. Should anyone with a degree be allowed to teach? Is professional education worthless? Scott Walker thinks so. So will others who read the NCTQ report, which graded teacher education with an F without bothering to visit any of the institutions it graded so harshly.

This parent writes:

Dear Diane,

My suggestion is far beyond my ability to assess; here’s my thought.

This report on the quality of teacher education is a smear against those, like my daughter, who have just completed their education. As an elementary and special ed teacher, she had to complete an entire year of student teaching, at great expense to her and her husband. It took her 5 years, total, to become a teacher. Now, in the pending Wisconsin state budget, Scott Walker is proposing alternate certification, where anyone with any bachelor’s degree can get certified to teach just by teaching. In essence, the experience gained using an emergency certification becomes the curriculum / criteria for certification itself. Therefore, teachers like my daughter, who have just completed their education will now be tainted by this study, when boards across the state decide that someone with “real world” experience would be preferable to candidates who dedicated themselves to this career from the beginning.

Is there no one who will address this outrage? We complain about the deep pockets of those who would destroy education. Maybe it’s time that those deep pockets became a legitimate target for a class action lawsuit.

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Here here! When I was going to school, the mantra was, “Become highly qualified!” I did! I have a BA in Elementary Ed. and an MA in Spec. Ed. Little did I know, becoming highly qualified would backfire, and I’m now struggling to find a job since districts are only hiring “cheap labor” so to speak. Saddled with student loan debt, and IF I get a job, low pay… I RESENT how folks can get a quickie teaching cert. without the expense… it completely devalues my years of education and experience. People such as TFAs are modern day scabs.

Here’s an important follow-up note to the Walker education maneuvering underway here in Wisconsin. A late change to the proposed budget (which is inappropriately loaded with these various policy provisions) inserted language that allows existing charters in Racine and Milwaukee to create unlimited “branch” schools anywhere in the state using the same name. Enrollment in these would NOT be counted under the statewide enrollment cap included in the bill.
In fact, our state allows a governor to use line-item vetoes very creatively and so the cap language may be removed entirely anyway, once it reaches his desk, with a simple swipe of the pen.
The extent to which his social engineering policies is equivalent to that of a dictator is appalling, which is the mildest language I can use for what is happening to education here. The 2010 redistricting was completed by his Republican majority, behind closed doors, and resulted in the 2012 elections showing that a significant majority of actual voters in WI voted for Democratic representatives in our statehouse, but the districts were such that his party won more seats in both chambers.
he tells them what to do, they do it, he signs it, tweaking as needed if the details were modified in the least along the process.

Exactly. Yesterday my special education graduate students sent this letter to the TN Board of Education about Huffman’s draconian salary scheme. Our special education graduates learn how to advocate for our children with special needs. My goals is that they also become advocates for their profession.

June 20, 2013

Dear Tennessee School Board Members,

We are special education undergraduates and graduates at the University of TN, Knoxville (UTK) and members of TN Student Council for Exceptional Children, Chapter #0571 (SCEC). We are writing to voice our concern about the proposed state minimum salary schedule proposed by Commissioner Huffman that reduces the step raises from 21 to 4, collapses the advanced degree categories from four to one, and ends raises after 11 years of service.

Commissioner Huffman claims experience and advanced degrees do not impact student learning. A reanalysis of the TN STAR study contradicts this notion, showing that kindergarten students had higher achievement and earnings as adults depending on how long teachers had been in the profession. Teaching is a practice profession. More experience matters.

How can the TN Dept. of Education justify punishing teachers for achieving more education? UTK’s fifth year program requires students to teach full time, conduct a research study, and take classes, terminating in a Masters degree. We are well prepared to assume professional responsibilities for teaching and, with our Masters, prepared to conduct rigorous data analyses on student performance and on our teaching practices. Every principal and school system in TN actively recruits graduates of UTK’s five-year program.

Underlying the draconian cuts to the salary scale is the effort to use the TN evaluation plan to impose merit or bonus pay, determined in part by standardized test scores. By the evaluation plan’s own metric, only 15% of TN teachers will earn a bonus. Our students in special education by definition do not perform well on standardized tests thus reducing special educators’ chances for salary increases.

When Commissioner Kevin Huffman was sworn into office, he was the best-paid agency head making $200,000 per year, up $20,000, or 11 percent, from his predecessor. Gov. Haslam then stated, “In government we’re never going to pay what they do in the private market. But if we’re going to attract great people, we’re going to have to at least make it comparable.”

This pay plan will not attract the best teachers to TN. Education graduates who choose to leave the state to pursue a fair wage opens the door for short-term, out-of-state temporary teachers and an ever-insecure class of teachers. As such, Tennessee children will lose their heritage. We want to stay and teach in Tennessee. Please help us by rejecting this teacher pay plan.

I have been in public education for more than 30 years. I am a recognized leader and have received many awards for excellence and advocacy for children. Wisconsin right now is the “wild west” of educational practice.

I am deeply committed to excellence in practice. I will advocate for strong models for quality improvement and student learning. As a district Carnegie Foundation is completing a case study on our work with a focus on our quality improvement model. I am working with among the best educators I have had the great privilege to work. The early results are remarkable, and I am confident we will be a national model of excellence.

Our Governor and our legislators are walking away from the needs of our schools and our community. Each of our schools is exceeding state expectations. We are in the top 10% performing school districts in the state.

We have lost 41% of our state aid, our local property taxes have gone up by 19%, and our local legislators have each voted to expand private vouchers across the state of Wisconsin, and an income tax credit for parents sending their children to private schools. Our community will off set the costs of this for the entire state of Wisconsin because we are considered a property rich districts. Our community is middle income, but we are the 3rd largest manufacturing community in the state. Therefore, our property values hold at a greater rate than the values around us.

The politics nationally, and within are state, are losing site of community values, the best interest of local economies, and the future for our state.

As a state we indicate we are committed to quality performance, and preparing students for strong post-secondary transitions.

Locally, we will continue to cut 2 million dollars of programming each year under the revenue limits as our legislators advance a dual system for education.

They know and have acknowledged that they will not be able to sustain adequate funding for public schools.

We have among the strongest schools in the nation. We continue to advance policy that will unravel what our local communities value for their children.

The local legislators have stopped advancing policy to reflect local values. They are passing budgets at 2 in the morning with less than an hour of debate. There is no public input and no evidence to support the voucher expansion.

Wisconsin policy makers are walking away from the strength of their schools.

It is interesting that reformers are advocating that teachers with no professional training are somehow better teachers than those of us who have been professionally educated. It is ridiculous in the extreme!

Let’s try this analogy. Governor Walker needs to have cardiac bypass surgery. He has a choice; the first choice is to have a professionally educated and licensed and certified Doctor of Medicine with his/her residency in Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, while his second choice is a physician “wanna-be” off the street who has graduated a five-week program who believes that playing at “Doctor” seems like fun.

Which choice would Scott Walker make?

A class action lawsuit would be great! There are many going around the country right now over teacher evaluation, but in Walker’s case, I also advocate a national boycott of Wisconsin industry and business until he is out of office.

Since I have a teaching degree plus 25 years experience can I be fast tract into becoming a doctor, nurse, engineer, museum director. How about manager of a professional sports team. Hey it’s only fair. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. Ha, ha

It looks like the teacher training darlings of corporate “reformers” (who sit on the NCTQ boards) which prepare teachers to be military style drill sergeants at “no excuses” charters, Relay Graduate School of Education in NY and Match at Sposato Grad School of Ed in MA, escaped being rated by NCTQ, which is very curious:

Match was nowhere to be found –not in the report itself nor on the state page for MA which lists colleges that were and were not rated.

Relay was also not listed in the report or on the NY state page either. However, Hunter College, where Relay originated, is listed and it is one of the few schools where most of its programs have high ratings.

Ok. I have a degree in accounting. I was an accountant for 15 years. I switched to teaching in 2008 and was thoroughly shocked that teaching was so different than I imagined and also that it was so difficult. When I was an accountant, I remembered thinking that getting off at 4pm sounded like a dream since I worked until 6pm as a general rule. However, on the first day of being an instructional assistant I looked up at the clock at 3pm and wondered how it could only be 3pm. I was exhausted. Teachers have no down time. I was lucky to get to use the restroom let alone have a real lunch. Since then, I have acknowledged that I am just “on” from 7:30am until 4:00pm. There isn’t any leisurely talk at the coffee pot, or walk around the building to wake up, or even personal phone calls to set an appointment. There isn’t any “zoning out” at your desk like so many other professionals do. It is exhausting. I love working with the kids and teaching gives me so much more than I ever thought that it would, but it is VERY different than the non-teaching public will understand. My first year was a wake-up call. I wouldn’t go through that again for anything and I went through Indiana University (one of the schools that made decent marks in this sham of a study).

This two parts of this letter do not seem to fit together – is the letter-writer outraged about Scott Walker or about the NCTQ? If the outrage is directed against the NCTQ, then that does not make sense: the study does not advocate getting rid of teacher education; just the opposite in fact. It is a call for better teacher training and identifies the need to make real improvements in the colleges of education. Sadly, the fact that the colleges themselves refused to cooperate in the development of an accurate report and their subsequent dissatisfaction with that report does not further the cause of improved teacher education in any way. There are some serious problems in the colleges of education that do need to be addressed and attacking the NCTQ is not really going to move us forward in making those improvements.

However, Laura, methinks that the NCTQ Report is, in part (if not in all!), a plan to imbed Pearson evaluation tests, textbooks and software (not to mention more Microsoft) into the colleges and universities. In other words, business as usual–ka-ching!–and especially as more and more parents, older students and even legislators are questioning the need for all of this ridiculous “standardized” testing. In relation to this topic, be sure to read Diane’s post about Indiana’s lawsuit involving McGraw-Hill.

All the more reason for the colleges to have participated in the report. I’m not an advocate of Common Core, Pearson, et al. (in fact, I am a fierce opponent of them), but there are undeniably problems, including some serious problems, in the colleges of education at present (even Linda Darling-Hammond admits as much in the item reposted here in this blog), and I think it was a mistake for the colleges to have refused, almost without exception, to participate in the preparation of this report. By having refused to supply information, they really do not have a lot of room to complain about the inaccuracies.

Yes, rbmtk, I agree with you completely. This fake report is one of the first volleys across the bow. It begins a stealth plan for edu-preneurs to privatize both teacher credentialing and evaluation.
Because, obviously, if they kill off the colleges of education, there is no way to recover from the ill-conceived corporate tech-based products that districts will buy and place in all of our classrooms or the TFA-ers and para-professionals who will replace credentiale and experienced teachers.
Knowledgeable and experienced teachers are a big problem for edu-preneurs because they know how often ed fads fail.

Course catalogs are skimpy and often out of date (the course descriptions for my courses are decades old, dating to previous instructors who taught the same courses, not even matching what I teach), and the way that many (most?) colleges do not make syllabuses of their courses available is disgraceful, in my opinion – it really hinders the ability of prospective students to find out what classes would be best for them, since a two- or three-sentence blurb in a course catalog is hardly a basis on which students can decide about which classes will best meet their needs. So, simply to serve their own students if for no other reason, yes, I think colleges should make their reading lists and syllabuses available online publicly. I understand that you disagree, and most professors agree with you too I guess since, either through conscious choice or simple apathy, course syllabuses are not all publicly available online even at public universities (as I discovered when I took a close look at the college of education’s website at my own school this week, made curious by the NCTQ study). To use another food cliche, you can’t have your cake and eat it too – if schools are going to make it a point of pride not to have supplied information in some publicly accessible venue, fine, make it a point of pride, but those schools then share part of the responsibility for people (your own students, NCTQ, the general public) not being able to find that information.

Thanks for your response. It can be frustrating when a post doesn’t show up, have had it happen to myself more than once. Hmmm, might that point to a simple “online learning” problem?

Online learning may be an option for very highly motivated adults (and perhaps a few highly motivated high schoolers) but generally for k-12 I see mainly potential problems and pitfalls, of which I’m sure you’re aware. I also use “..” on a word to attempt to give them a little bit different meaning/tone. I do not see them as “scare” quotes as they were around online because I was attempting to say that “online learning” is not and cannot ever be (pretty strong, eh) the same as the face to face teaching and learning process no matter what the supporters of online learning proffer. Now does that mean that an online course can’t provide information and a learning opportunity? NO! It’s just a different mode of textbook which can be a perfectly fine way of delivering the content.

I do understand your concern with university teachers of teacher prep who have never taught in the areas in which they “profess”. But I have found that many aspiring and new teachers claim that the courses were “too theoretical” and “not practical” enough. And for me it is the theoretical/philosophical underpinnings that are far more important than just content delivery.

Again, your experience has been post secondary and that is quite a bit different than K-12.

Since I have 10+ years of experience teaching online, and you do not, perhaps you won’t be surprised that I disagree with your uninformed contention about the inherent inferiority of online teaching compared to classroom teaching. I’m not sure why you think online teaching is just about content delivery; it is not. Obviously online teaching is not the same as in the classroom (apples and oranges) – but for some subjects, it can be far superior (for juice, I prefer orange juice to apple juice, but as for pie, I prefer apple pie to orange pie). I teach writing, and since the medium of communication in an online class is reading and writing, it’s a natural space in which to help students improve their writing skills, unlike the oral/aural classroom which naturally emphasizes speaking and listening skills. I am not a textbook; I am a teacher who is interacting with my students full-time every week online – and the students consistently comment in the evaluations that they get far more attention from me in this way along with having more opportunity to interact with their fellow students than in the usual 3-hours-per-week classroom time of a college class. You’ve already made up your mind though, despite the fact that I would wager you have never taught online and have certainly not done so for 10+ years as I have. So, just as you feel free to disregard my comments about K-12 teaching because I teach college, you’ll understand that I feel free to disregard your comments about online teaching since you’re a classroom teacher.

A big part of the problem with the study is that because most schools refused to participate, the data had to be gathered from public sources, often by means of compelling universities to produce data according to the open records laws of those states – this is why private schools are underrepresented in the study, and also why the information is often sketchy for public universities. Even though they are “public” universities, they are not always very good at any kind of public transparency in what they do. After reading the report I went to see what I could learn from the website for the college of education at the school where I teach and I was shocked at how little information was available. The best thing that could come of this report I think is for schools to come forward and make public all the great things they do, providing easy access to all the information they wanted to see in the report – and I personally wish they had supplied that information to begin with. It’s pretty clear now that the report is out that it is going to get a lot of press, and I don’t think any school is going to benefit from having refused to share information to begin with.

Duane Swacker, you are in fact wrong – I completed my teacher certification training back in the 90s and was so appalled by the process that I opted for a university teaching career instead. The school at which I did my two years of teacher certification training received a one-star rating in the report, which does not surprise me at all based on the mindless and time-wasting courses which I was required to take all those years ago, taught largely by people who had never taught in a K-12 classroom themselves. My complaints about teacher education today in some ways overlap with the criticism in the NCTQ report, and in some ways they are different. If you are interested in my views (although I doubt you are), I participate in a teacher network at Google+ with both higher ed and K-12 teachers – http://plus.ly/lauragibbs
As for your remarks about my teaching online (why the scare quotes around “online”?), all my materials are available openly and I would ask you to investigate them yourself before drawing any conclusions – http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/ – By trying to reach conclusions about my teaching career without knowing a single thing about it, you are actually being far more prejudicial than the report in question.

From where are you getting your information on which you base your criticism? How do you know that 2old2tch has never graduated from a college-level teaching program, or that this person is merely an on-line facilitator?

This is the exact nature of how the reformers misuse data and information. Here in Hartford, CT, they subtract one year’s CAPT scores (the state standardized test) from another to determine school growth or failure. Yet, there is no statistical correlation between the two scores, given the potentially millions of independent variables between the scores, and the fact that different groups of students took the tests, and the tests contained different questions from each other.

Apparently, the NCTQ was also conducted and reported using these types of sloppy research methods just to make a political point. I expect nothing less from the reformers.

if you notice that I quoted Laura Gibbs and Not 2o2t 2o2t stated. My comment about “on line facilitator” is meant to be a jab at on line courses as how can one teach without face to fact interactions? Some training can occur on line but it’s a far cry from “teaching and learning”.

LG has not answered my questions as of yet other than to state that she has looked at her own university’s school of education website and that the site is lacking in what she considers to be information that all schools of education should have. But that does not answer “What is your beef with teacher preparation programs?” Not that she has any obligation whatsoever to respond to this old fart secondary Spanish teacher.

Your prejudice against online education does not bode well for this dialogue – and it seems ironic in the extreme to dismiss online education in a forum where we are, indeed, communicating online, hopefully in order to learn from each other.

Imagine a person reviews the restaurants in your city by examining the menus they found on-line. Never tasted the food or ever visited any restaurant. How seriously would you take the reviews that were written? That is the NCTQ report on colleges of education. Had NCTQ not already developed a reputation for sloppy “research” perhaps ed schools would have cooperated. Personally, I’m glad they didn’t.

For the same reason, it’s hard to figure out what to say in response to comments here by people who it seems have not read the report but feel in a position to dismiss its contents – a lot of people are clearly putting down this report without having read it.
I’m not glad the schools refused to participate – and what I would be most glad about would be if they would make this kind of information publicly available to all, easily accessible to prospective students, to teachers in schools, parents, etc. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I went to check the ed school for my university just to see what kind of information was publicly available at the website and there were not even syllabuses for most classes, much less portfolios of student work, information about job placement, policy papers or position papers that I could read online about urgent issues in the field of education today, etc. In a world where every college of education has a website, I would like to see them doing better with that as a public resource. Some schools, admittedly, do a fine job, but it was slim pickings at the college of education website at my school as I discovered when following up after reading the NCTQ report.

I read the NCTQ report in full. It is not a credible report. I am proud of my institution for refusing to give them any information. They are not a professional association. The organization was created to harass education schools. They are doing far better that anyone at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation imagined in 2000, when hey initiated NCTQ.

Yes, I read Linda Darling-Hammond’s statement; I also read the NCTQ report which is available online. In addition, I would call people’s attention to Darling-Hammond’s statement that “while I have seen many strong teacher education programs, there are many others that are very weak and need major improvements’ (- http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/21/linda-darling-hammond-responds-to-nctq/ -) , although commenters here at this post seem to assume that teacher education programs in this country are beyond criticism.
If schools are not willing to supply data to the NCTQ (and they were not), then I would expect them to make the information available by other means. Sadly, many schools have not done so. No one is well served by schools withholding information that can help create a better understanding of teacher education in this country.

I agreed with Linda Darling-Hammond that there are weak teacher education programs but the NCTQ has no credibility for distinguishing between good ones and bad ones. They are not a professional association. No one can judge an institution without visiting it. Reviewing course catalogs and reading lists is not a proper evaluation.

Diane, if institutions refused to participate, and obviously that is their choice, then I would hope they make useful information – even more useful information than that collected for the report – available in some easily accessible public forum. My school has not done that. If your school has done that, more power to them.

It is easy to get any institution’s course catalog. NCTQ wanted reading lists. If I were still teaching, I would not give them my reading list. Am I a bad teacher if they don’t like my reading list? They didn’t visit classes or campuses. Would you accept a restaurant review based on the menu, not on the comments of people who tasted the food and actually visited the restaurant?

I’ve noticed that quite a few people tend to pay attention once people start suing. Everyone who feels they have a case against any of this should start proceedings right now before the next school year!

I agree with you, and feel for your daughter. I graduated from a school of education in Florida 25 years ago. I did a student internship, learned how to write lessons, learned about ed policy. I was shocked to learn that I did not have any better chance of securing a job than a person with a degree in history. I know I was better prepared. Over the years, I have seen well meaning people with no ed education come into teaching, and they only experience than can go on for issues outside their subject area (discipline, ESE) was their own experience as students.

I have sent a copy of my book and the rationale for a class action law suit to the Southern Povert Law Center as my hope is for them to be involved. They are sharing my thoughts with others but the time is now. No longer can we destroy kids by insisting that they all learn in the same way and at the same time.